


Hiraeth

by EthelPhantom



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Red Robin (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen, Hurt Tim Drake, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I was sad so I made Tim sad, Tim Drake Angst, Tim Drake Needs a Hug, Tim Drake-centric, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:15:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23663731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EthelPhantom/pseuds/EthelPhantom
Summary: Hiraeth [noun] (Welsh)/hɪraɨ̯θ/A homesickness for a home you can't return to, or that never was.Tim, he’s been…Well, he’s been.He doesn’t know how to explain it better than that.
Relationships: Bart Allen & Tim Drake & Kon-El | Conner Kent & Cassie Sandsmark, Tim Drake & Prudence Wood
Comments: 93
Kudos: 490





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> ...Yes, I was projecting on Tim, because I have a problem with getting yelled at and I don't speak the same love language as my family does, so. Tim is a good person to project on.
> 
> This is, at least for now, a three-chapter story, I do have plans for three chapters, but knowing myself, I tried to write this chapter in a way so that if I end up unable to write it for any reason, I can come back and mark it as done and it should be okay. In case that happens, I will, depending on how this was received, write the plans I had for this in the endnotes. 
> 
> Oh! There's a mention of past self-harm. A very short and brief one, but it is there, so yeah. Take care of yourself, please.
> 
> Without further ado, enjoy!

_ Hiraeth [noun] (Welsh) _

_ /hɪraɨ̯θ/ _

_ A homesickness for a home you can't return to, or that never was. _

* * *

Tim, he’s been… 

Well, he’s been. 

He doesn’t know how to explain it better than that. 

No, seriously, he really doesn’t know how to explain it better than that. He doesn’t think there is a way to explain it better than that. He just knows there’s something he’s missing and it bothers him. He doesn’t know what it is, or what it was.

He can explain how he feels right now, though. That is something he can do. That is not an impossibility he can only wish he knew how to do. 

Tim feels, he feels sad. 

Or maybe, maybe sad isn’t the word he should use now, it isn’t the correct word to use. Tim isn’t sad. Tim is… Maybe he’s upset. Or maybe he should say he’s unhappy. That at least would be true because he knows for a fact that ‘happy’ is something that has been missing from his vocabulary quite a while. He’s not sure when he lost it, but he did. 

Maybe it was when Dick took Robin away. 

Or maybe it was when Steph faked her death and no one told him that little bit.

It could have also been when Kon and Bart and Dad and  _ everyone  _ died. 

Or maybe it was when Jason beat him up for the first time for taking the mantle of Robin. 

Or maybe it was when he heard his parents were kidnapped. 

It is also possible that he’d lost the word back when his parents were gone for more than 5 weeks without telling him for the first time. 

He just doesn’t know. He doesn’t know when he lost it. 

(Sometimes, Tim thinks he was born without it because he cannot remember. Anything. At all.)

It’s like he lost the memories of such things (happiness, love, non-miserable times, non-empty times) when he moved out of the Drake Estate. 

Because that’s what it was, the Drake Estate, not ‘home’ or something similar to that. It’s hard to make a place home when all you associate with the place are feelings of loneliness, feelings of being left behind by those one would think would take care of him — his own parents. Jack and Janet Drake never truly cared. 

And okay, maybe Tim can remember one thing that has remained unchanged, and it’s the feeling of missing something, something that he doesn’t know the name of, something that he knows he doesn’t have. 

The Manor doesn’t really feel like a home either. It’s just a house he lives in, a house where he is a guest, just someone who takes up space without paying for said space. It feels wrong. To him, it’s everyone else’s home, but there is and has always been something amiss about the place. Tim doesn’t know how to make it his, too. Tim’s tried.

But, he’ll keep pretending it feels like a home (not  _ home,  _ just  _ a  _ home, because he isn’t sure how it  _ home  _ should feel like) for the sake of Alfred and Cass and Dick. And Bruce, he supposes. They seemed to maybe care about how he feels about the Manor. At least it means he can stay in his room a lot. Away from everyone else.

Tim’s sitting on the floor of his room, staring at the door. He isn’t sure when exactly he started, but he does know he’s been at it for at least eleven and a half minutes. That’s how long Dick and Jason’s arguments usually last nowadays before Alfred comes in between and tells them to go calm down, tells them that that ‘isn’t the way two grown people should talk to one another, lads’ and sends them both to separate rooms. And Tim knows he was already staring at the door when the argument, which was silenced approximately fifteen seconds ago, began.

Tim sits there even after that. He has long since put his headphones on and turned up the music. It’s the only thing blocking out the voice inside that’s telling him he isn’t needed. Nothing else silences it, everything else only strengthens it. He doesn’t want to deal with that. It’s… it’s too difficult. Because he knows he’s (technically) needed. But he feels different. And he can’t make it stop, he can’t change it. He’s tried, alright, Tim hasn’t just watched it happen and done nothing. 

Just like he logically knows Dick and Bruce and Alfred and Cass (probably) love him but  _ he can’t feel it.  _

It seems his language of love is very different from them. 

Dick’s is physical touch. He is sure of it. He seems the happiest when the people Tim knows Dick loves touch him, when they hug him and let him cuddle them. It’s why he tends to reach out to people more physically than anything else, why he’s so quick to ruffle Damian’s hair, give Wally a fist bump, pat Tim’s shoulder. It’s why unkind, yet intimate, physical touches have hurt him the most.

Bruce shows his love through acts of service. Acts of service the people around him won’t often get to see or understand, often they won’t even get to know that it was Bruce that did it. It’s the same with Alfred, and Tim thinks that Alfred is where Bruce learnt that from, as it is clear that said acts of service don’t make  _ Bruce  _ feel loved. 

Tim doesn’t… Tim doesn’t actually know  _ what  _ makes  _ Bruce  _ feel loved. 

Maybe Bruce doesn’t know either. 

Tim thinks Cass’ is either quality time or physical touch. Maybe both. Probably both. After all, it’s body language that she reads and understands the best, and soft, loving touches seem to make her smile. And Cass is more relaxed after having been able to spend time and just  _ be  _ with Babs and Steph. Tim wonders if Cass is the same after she’s spent time with him. 

He doesn’t know, and he is sure he will never know either. 

Tim, though. He knows none of those is his love language. He enjoys doing them, in a way (acts of service make him feel less useless to others, he knows physical touch is important to other people and it does remind him he’s not… technically alone, though it does make him flinch often enough to have made him try and avoid it, often enough for others to have noticed and either touch him more if they hate him and touch him less if they seem like they care about him, and quality time is just nice), but he doesn’t feel loved like that. 

Tim is pretty sure he feels love through words. Perhaps not through the simplest ‘I love you’ because those are so easy to say without meaning them, but Tim knows how to read between lines. He can find the meaning behind lies because he lies so much, he knows lies better than most people he’s met because he can get away with lying to  _ Batman.  _ And that means he is also able to see when someone wants to say something else, when someone’s words have a double meaning behind them. Actions are nice, but with those, you can never know for sure whether you're interpreting things wrong. Words are easier and clearer to see through and understand. That's why he likes them so much. 

But the thing is. The thing is, he doesn’t know for sure. Bruce and Alfred and Dick don’t do declarations of love, not to the family, or at least not to  _ Tim.  _ Maybe they do it to someone else, but not him. Cass he understands, she has a hard time speaking and it’s okay, it’s not her fault she can’t help him figure it out, because she really seems to try, but it’s— it’s just not enough. Has never been enough. Will never be enough. 

And the thing is, it seems all words are good for is hurt. Hurt and pain and agony and— That. Tim thinks that the reason he suspects that words of affirmation, that words, in general, are his love language is because it is and has always been the hardest but also the most painful, the most efficient way to hurt him. He locks his feelings up so the words don’t get there easily, and so they won’t hurt him, not like a fist to the face or a knife to the throat, not like someone cutting his grapple line, but once they are there — once they get past the security system he’s built around his feelings and heart — they cut him like a thousand knives at once. 

Doubting him does it, not believing him does it, and straight-up telling him he’s not worth a thing, that everyone would be better off without him, that definitely does it. They get through before long and hurt like hell. 

So okay, yes. Maybe he _is_ sure his love language is words, because he’s been hurt the worst by words — or the lack of them —, because the wounds caused by words can’t truly be healed by anything but  _ words.  _

And yelling, well. Out of all the ways words can surpass his security, yelling gets through the easiest and the hardest and it hurts so much. Tim can feel his heart stop in his chest when someone yells out of anger, regardless of whether it is aimed at him or someone else, but maybe especially when it’s aimed at him. 

Jason yells and screams at his face, thus, he is associated with the most pain. Damian yells less, but his words are all the more hurtful, so he stands on the same level as Jason. Bruce doesn’t do yelling, not at his children or Tim, much, at least. Mostly, he keeps giving them the body language that tells he’s disappointed and doesn’t know what to do with them. (Tim wonders how much it affects Cass because she can read him the clearest. If she is hurt by that, or if she can find a hidden meaning in his actions like Tim can find in people’s words.)

But he doesn’t yell that much, and it makes him better than Jason or Damian. 

Cass never yells. She’s rarely even angry with Tim. She is safe. Even if he can trust no one else, he can trust her. She’s comforting. Alfred never yells either, he stays calm and gives explanations, he doesn’t leave Tim hanging. He doesn’t get angry at Tim without explaining why, always with calmness, and he is willing to talk things out. That makes him safe in Tim’s books as well.

Dick doesn’t yell either. Not at Tim. He is… Not  _ safe _ , per se, but he is okay. Tim can trust him with some things. He knows he can talk to Dick. He is above Bruce, too. It’s not like it’s that hard — or it shouldn’t be, anyway, as unfortunate as that is — but it’s good enough. After all, he doesn’t yell.

Not until now. 

Because Dick is yelling at him. Dick  _ never  _ yells at Tim, not after Tim finally opened up to him and told him that it makes him anxious when people are yelling in an angry manner near Tim (not Red Robin, because as Red Robin he can forget who Tim is and what Tim wants and needs because Red Robin isn’t Tim Drake) and that it can take him to the verge of a panic attack and it isn’t even that difficult to do so. And Dick understood. And he had stopped yelling at Tim. So yes, Dick never yells at Tim except for now, because now he’s screaming and yelling at Tim’s face and spitting out hurtful and sharp words that he may or may not mean, all because Tim… Well, he doesn’t— He doesn’t actually even know. 

Dick just did so without explanations. 

Again. 

It seems it is ~~has become~~ a habit of his to do hurtful things (to Tim, especially) without explanations.

Tim shakes his head, squeezing his eyes shut as he feels the anxiety building up inside him, just waiting to crush down because someone was too careless. He knows there are tears in his eyes, he can feel them on his eyelashes and the corners of his eyes, the burning in his eyes is unavoidable, inevitable. 

He’s shaking. Trembling. Clutching his arms, freezing as he realises he can  _ feel  _ the scars underneath his suit, the ones that  _ Tim himself  _ inflicted. They’re some of the few that weren’t caused by either the family (because it’s not like they’re  _ his  _ family, truly — that they have made clear, and Tim isn’t stupid enough to believe their words in the matter) or some Gotham villain or thug. They’re the ones Tim personally picked up a blade for. 

It’s a miracle Dick has never noticed the scars. 

Or maybe it’s not, because when was the last time that Dick actually, genuinely,  _ truly  _ noticed the signs that told a member of the family was getting worse and worse? 

Certainly not during the time Bruce was missing, lost in time and all that, because back then he’d worsened all of it. 

(Because Tim refuses to believe that he noticed. If he noticed and did everything he did anyway, it’ll hurt so much more, and as long as Tim doesn’t have definite proof, he’s going to cling onto that little less hurtful truth.)

It takes two more minutes of yelling until Tim can’t take it anymore,  _ he needs to get away, he needs to get out of here,  _ and Tim just straightens his back, takes off his cape (he throws it at Dick’s face who splutters), he unclasps the utility belt (it’s hurled into the ground with such strength and such precision that everything just spills out and spreads onto the floor), and he gets out of the rest of the suit that is then left on the ground— and he walks out, away from Dick, without even one single word. 

Because he doesn’t want to give Dick more of his words. 

He doesn’t want to give Dick  _ yet another _ chance at words (because they’ll only hurt him anyway).

They’re way past the point where Tim can just  _ ignore  _ the words, even for a little bit of time. 

At least Jack and Janet Drake, as horrible parents as they were, never pretended to give Tim their words. They just were never there. Compared to the words that he keeps getting and that keep hurting him in the Wayne family, the endless silence is preferable.

He decides to leave things he can easily get new ones of at the Manor, like his phone. And keys are hidden in the drawer of his desk, of course. Why would he take them with him? It’s easier to choose what to leave behind than it is to choose what to take with him. 

Even so, Tim manages and packs the most important things he has fast; his laptop and his card (the one with access to his trust fund, not the one Bruce gave him because that one is trackable) and some clothing just in case, takes something small to eat from the kitchen and  _ leaves.  _

For the first time, he leaves the Manor with no intention to ever return. 

The Red Robin suit (all of them, because he has many, who in the hero/vigilante community doesn’t have multiple of them?) are left behind in the Manor because leaving Red Robin behind means others will have a harder time finding him. 

Not like he’s sure they’ll try in the first place.

He leaves everyone behind and moves to one of the safehouses he had in Central City just in case, knowing he was welcome there on some level at least even if the Central City’s heroes weren’t all that welcome in Gotham (because who truly was  _ welcome  _ in  _ Gotham,  _ of all places?) It’s one of the few places he knows Bruce and Dick and Alfred and Steph and Cass won’t think to look from, not until it’s far, far too late. 

It’s also the one safe house he’s laced with steel and kryptonite because it was meant for hiding from other heroes and vigilantes rather than being a safe place to go to rest, a safe place to escape to from villains. It’s the one safe house he’s never told anyone about, the one he made sure no one, even Babs, would ever find out about.

Because he has always known a day like this would come, a day when it will be the ones he’s supposed to work with hurting him so much he cannot take it anymore. 

He’s always known. 

And so he shuts everyone out. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It seems I am writing the whole fic then. And I'm updating fast. This is exactly what was not supposed to happen. I was supposed to be writing a whole another thing and _yet_. 
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoy this! 
> 
> Or cry, that works too.

Leaving Gotham is hard. 

The damn city tends to make you hate it, yet most who are born there never manage to get out (even if everyone knew it would be better to live elsewhere) because there is something about it that also makes you love it. Or, at least, that something makes leaving and moving somewhere else extremely difficult. 

There is no doubt Tim needs to get out anyway. He cannot stay even one moment longer, not when the family is there, not when their resources cover the entire city. Even the entire state. He should know, he helped with making sure of that.

Thus, Tim is grateful for having bought a safe house in Central City. A safe house where he could escape to from other vigilantes, as it has a security system he built on his own, and it's laced with lead and kryptonite. Tim also has a freezing gun in there, just in case. He knows Cassie and Bart and Kon would be hurt and offended by the fact he has them but... It's not like he didn't have ways to stop and _kill_ them too anyway. He has those for everyone (Bruce is a bad influence on him). The fact he already has a place to go makes things easier, and in the end, leaving becomes easier too. 

(In a way, he is now happy that he had helped the Bats get their resources because if he hadn't, he would now be in more trouble. By helping them, he was able to ensure there was no mention of this safe house anywhere in their files. In anyone’s files, because if the Batman didn’t know, then no one else did either. After all, he never told even Kon or Bart or Cassie. Everyone is in the dark.)

Then again, maybe, in a way, leaving is easy because he  _ wants  _ to do it, and Tim’s always been one to do what he wants. Maybe not _get_ , but try and do anyway. After all, he did follow Batman and Robin for years in the night without anyone noticing him when he was a child (no wonder he was called the sneaky Robin if he knew how to hide from all the Rogues and even _Batman himself_ as a _little child_ ), and he did just walk to  _ the  _ Batman’s door, and dragged Dick all the way from Blüdhaven to Gotham,  _ and  _ declared  _ himself  _ the Robin when Dick refused to do it. Even if that was just because he knew  _ someone  _ needed to do so.

Tim knows his absence has been noticed because he still has access to the Batcomputer. There is a detailed report in the files about his little… episode, probably written as soon as they realised he was no longer on the Manor grounds, as Dick seems to call it ( _it is his fault, not yours,_ the little part of Tim’s brain that stays kind reminds him, and it makes him feel a little better), but there is no mention of what might have caused it. Tim scoffs, _of course Dick doesn’t know._

It isn’t like Dick to notice anyway. 

Tim should not have expected anything more. 

It is perhaps that hope, that small part of him that still tried to stay positive, that causes Tim’s tears to fall down his cheeks. After all, it is for that small hope, the high (too high, he’s always thought of the Bats in high regards, and they keep falling down from there times and times again, Tim ought to know better by now) expectations he has set for Dick and Bruce and Alfred and Cass, but perhaps especially Dick, that made him think Dick might notice what he did wrong, but as Dick fails to see it, it crashes down even worse on Tim’s side. 

Regardless, he misses them, so he stays in Missouri. Central City is close enough to New Jersey and Gotham that if there is an emergency for which they need two people to sit behind the computer and help, Tim will be able to help easily, but far enough that they won’t find him unless Tim lets them. And he won’t. 

He left for a reason.

That reason will be lost if he lets them back in. 

It feels selfish, not wanting them back in his life but wanting them to notice him and love him (and show him they love him in the way he can feel it, too, because why does he need to know all of their love languages if none of them knows his? It's so tiring), wanting them to see their mistakes and apologise. He can’t be selfish because that’s  _ bad,  _ or so Dick and Bruce and Steph and Babs have been telling him for years now. But he is. 

Because Tim isn’t a good person. 

Not like Dick is (simply good, unwilling to physically hurt anyone he doesn’t need to unless he is angry, always trying to see the good in others, even Jason and Damian, but that makes him blind to the bad things in  _ them), _ not like Bruce is (fighting to make sure no one needs to suffer as he did, desperately trying, yet failing because he won’t just  _ kill,  _ to prevent any other child from getting the same childhood as he did), not like Cass is (sweet, ready to fight for others and defend but never kill, but then again she was forced to kill and she cannot take it, she doesn’t refuse to do it because it would ‘make her as bad as the villains’), not even like Jason is (his morals may be grey and he might kill people and attack his replacement, but maybe that’s his right, because Jason sees that sometimes people need to die in order to stop so many others from getting hurt. Maybe, to Jason, killing Tim would've ensured others wouldn't get hurt. Tim isn't sure if he could disagree). 

And Tim… 

Tim just isn’t a good person. 

After all, he is the son of Janet and Jack Drake (because his parents taught him enough even if they were never there), and he is selfish, and he forced himself into the role of Robin, and he left the Wayne Enterprises and Lucius and Tam on their own, and he left his — no, not  _ his _ , he needs to stop thinking of them as his because they aren’t and never were — family behind without so much as a goodbye. And he is pretty sure he doesn’t mind killing as much as Bruce does, so there is that too. 

It’s more than clear why Bruce never did truly think of him as his son. Tim just was never worth it. 

He was too broken.

He was never worth it. 

(Just like he was never worth being Robin — everyone else had been chosen and personally handpicked by Batman. At least for a moment.)

He sighs and buries his face into his hands because he doesn’t want to see the reality that is him not mattering that much to anyone. When he lifts his head again, his hands are dry. Tim barks out a dry, humourless laugh because it seems he is so broken he can’t even cry when he wants to, but instead, his tears are stuck in his throat, making him want to gag and choke. 

Babs— Even if no one else does,  _ Barbara  _ definitely knows that he still has access to the files. She’s good like that. It’s just that Tim makes sure to only look into the files that he doesn’t need more than three passwords to get into (even if he knows those too and it wouldn’t be hard to get in further to read them) because that would leave her with too much information to use and track him— if she would ever do that. 

Maybe she would because Tim knows he isn’t completely useless to the family. It’s just that he was never  _ family,  _ just the one making sure they didn’t fall apart. And he knows he was useful as Red Robin. And Tim Wayne. Especially Tim Wayne, he guesses, because he did most of the work at WE as Bruce didn’t take his job back, not even once he was familiar enough with the current events after coming back. So maybe she would track him and try to bring him back, just to be able to use him again.

It’s just that Tim doesn’t want to have to need to be ‘useful’ to be a part of them. So he doesn’t want Barbara to find him. 

The problem he has with that is just that he knows she knows he still has access to the files, such as basic daily reports and patrol reports, and he can read all of them, but there is no mention of anyone  _ wanting  _ him back anywhere. Tim has checked. He had hoped.

And it hurts. It hurts to know that even Barbara doesn’t really care. She cares about Dick and she cares about Jason and she cares about Cass. Tim never belonged on that list. Not really.

Even then, Tim… He stays in Central City. The burning ache for a  _ home _ he feels won’t leave him alone, but the closest thing to a home he has is in Gotham and this is the closest to Gotham he’ll let himself get ever again. 

He has no idea whether it’s because they don’t  _ deserve  _ Tim, or if it’s because they don’t deserve  _ Tim.  _ Or perhaps it’s because  _ Tim  _ doesn’t deserve  _ them,  _ whatever that means. 

More than anything, he doesn’t want to get hurt again, doesn’t want anyone to yell at him again, doesn't want to deal with getting judged quite so much. It’s just too much. Too difficult.

Things come to an end when he is listening to one of the newer records the family always has stored somewhere. There is something about it from the second he sees it in the files, and someone — clearly not Barbara — has tried to do their best to delete or at least hide it. They did not succeed. A bit of working tells him that there have, in fact, been two people trying to do that: Dick and Stephanie. Neither of whom usually care about what they say in the cave at all. 

And so Tim clicks the recording. 

What he hears has him choke on his own saliva even though he really doesn’t mean to. 

He should not even be surprised. 

_ “Where the fuck is Replacement? He should have taken care of that territory of his instead of leaving it to rot and to us?” _

_ “Did you truly imagine Drake would have ever succeeded at being anything more than useless? If so, you must have hit your head somewhere and confused him for someone else for he has never been needed in this family.” _

_ “...Damian, maybe you—” _

_ “Maybe I what? I have done nothing but spoken the truth here, Richard. You know it as well. It is simply a good thing he has finally gone away. The only unfortunate thing is that I did not first manage to rid the existence of the waste of space that he is. We have no need for him, and I strongly doubt anyone else does either.” _

_ “Well, hate to say it, but the brat over there is right. If the Replacement’s left, he’s of no use for us. Whatever did we need him for before either? Good riddance.” _

_ “Tim does that. He’s probably going to come back in a few weeks and then we’ll have him again, Dick. It’s not that serious.” _

_ “Yeah but Steph—” _

_ “Nah, don’t worry about it. Besides, we’re fine without him too. We’ve been good until now.” _

_ “You… You’re right. Alright.” _

Tim can feel his blood boiling. It hurts so much to  _ hear  _ that all from their mouths, though he did know that, didn’t he (and it isn’t a question because he  _ knew  _ he already knew it, all of it). After all, he’s always been the one that knows the most about them all, right after Alfred and Cass. He’s never really tried, but they are not subtle, and he tends to pick things such as information up without meaning to.

It is the last straw that breaks the camel’s back. Tim hurries up to his feet, picks up a bunch of papers and just rips them all up, letting the pieces fall onto the ground. He doesn’t care what they are or were about. Once he’s done calming down, he flops down on the couch, pulls his laptop into his lap, buys a new house on a whim and gets himself a pair of plane tickets. 

He’s  _ out _ of the US. Out of the Wayne family's life.

He buys a new house on a whim, but he’s not sure it will feel  _ his _ , ever. He’s doing it to go away —  _ run away,  _ his brain supplies, _ an animal licking his wounds _ — and he’s sure it’ll be good, but he can’t feel it, can’t feel what he wants to, because that's not  _ it. _

It’s still not a home. He knows it will still not be a home.

(He doesn’t think there is a place that can become a home for Timothy Jackson Drake-Wayne. Or Timothy Jackson Drake. Or Tim Drake. Or Alvin Draper. Or Caroline Hill. Or Tim Wayne. Or any of his other names. 

Especially not  _ Tim.) _

While he’s at it, he creates himself a new alias in case someone knows all of them already. He becomes the citizen of Germany, suddenly has a European passport (alright so that took a while but not  _ that  _ long, he knows who to use to get it done and knows that more money gets things done faster), and no longer is he Timothy Jackson Drake-Wayne, no. He is Luca Timotheus Dietmar Fuchs now. He is just a young man who wanted to see how life would be in a nearby country. It isn’t too weird. 

(And he cannot be held at fault if he gave himself a name that could be given the nickname ‘Tim’ despite everything.)

Once there is a job secured for him in Amsterdam (and okay, Amsterdam isn’t packed with  _ good _ memories either but it’s better than Gotham, and it’s not a country the family would expect to find him at so easily either if they were to look for him. They won’t, but if. Besides, he speaks German and English and French so he should be fine even though he doesn’t yet speak the local language), he packs the few things he knows he will want with him and leaves. Again. 

For a moment he considers finding Ra’s, contacting him and telling him he would like to join the league, it isn’t like he has anything to lose at this point anymore, but the problem is, he doesn’t really want to end up in a situation where he will need to explain why he is there to any possible old acquaintances, he doesn’t want to find himself in a situation where he will have to lift his bo staff — or worse, a gun or a sword — against a friend with any other intention than friendly training, a spar where no participant will truly be  _ hurt.  _

And so he does not contact Ra’s. It was wrong of him to even consider it. 

(The voice in his head telling him that sounds suspiciously like Dick, and Tim, for a moment, out of spite, thinks he should just do the opposite because he does not want to listen to Dick and his orders any longer. Tim tells the voice to shut up.)

((It takes the voice all of three weeks to actually shut up. By then, he’s walking closer to the departure gate inside the airport.))

He sits in the plane, leaning against the window, watching the scenery change below him. It is not difficult to notice when they pass Gotham — there is simply no way not to see the smoke and fog that surrounds it, all the pollution the city is full of. 

And to think it’s better now than it was once.

Tim feels a teardrop on his cheek. It’s just one. He isn’t… He isn’t sure whether that is because he’s leaving, or if it is because he’s leaving  _ without telling anyone,  _ or if it is because, for the first time in his life, he’s leaving everything behind for good. 

He doesn't know whether the tear is shed out of sadness or _happiness._

It feels wrong. Not telling anyone and moving abroad, that is. It's definitely at least the thought of leaving somehow being positive, though. Tim doesn’t know whether it’s more the not telling anyone or the moving abroad part, but it’s one of them and maybe it’s both just as much. Maybe it changes every time he tries to think about it.

He has the house he bought furnished before he even moves there, so he can just walk inside and fall on the couch. He curls up in a ball and breathes heavily, trying to get his thoughts to fall in order. 

Tim falls asleep on that couch. When he wakes up in the morning, the pillow is damp. 

Even now, Tim doesn’t really know what to think about any of this. He is… he’s not actually sure. He feels useless. There is nothing to do, really, not now anyway, his job is not going to start in a week or two still, and even once it starts, it’s not as…. Well, Tim already knows that he’s not going to be  _ helping  _ people. Not like he helps—  _ helped _ people in Gotham. There he was the CEO of the WE and could try to improve Gotham’s life in general, and as Red Robin, he could take the criminals away from the streets at least for a few nights and maybe save a life or two. 

Here? 

It’s not going to happen.

Tim would love to say that everything that the thing he feels now is sadness but it doesn’t feel like it. Sadness eventually goes away. It doesn’t stay with you. Not for this long, at least. He doesn’t know  _ how  _ to describe it, but there has to be a way to do so. 

At least he knows that whatever it is, it’s an ocean, and he’s drowning in it because he’s been left there, injured, without any life preservers or life jackets or  _ anything  _ that floats and could carry his weight. 

He needs to learn how to swim.

He needs to learn how to survive.

A survivor is so much scarier to face because you have no idea what they’ve survived, you have no idea what they’ve done to survive in the first place. 

And maybe, if he’s scary enough, people will no longer be able to hurt him.

The shower hitting his face and neck and back is cold. Tim forgot to set it to warm but now he doesn’t want to change it anymore. Maybe it will wake him up. Or maybe, just maybe, it will help him clear his head. 

Or then it’s the best he can do to ignore the pain and the ache inside that he doesn’t want to feel but can’t let go of either. It’s either this or a blade and he knows which he prefers. 

Tim thinks it might also be because the pain makes him feel like — even if he’s drowning at the same time and  _ isn’t that confusing?  _ — he’s ablaze. On fire. Like he’s caught on flames and he has no way to extinguish them. No other way except hopefully the cold water raining on him. It’s like his life has been set aflame and the smoke fills every other space because  _ he can’t breathe.  _ It takes up all the space in his lungs and his life, replacing all of the oxygen, everything that he could breathe that isn’t toxic. 

And Tim is sure that before long, he’s going to die from the toxicity. 

In a way though, he feels like the most toxicity in his life was left behind. Like it stayed in Gotham, in the States, as he left. The thought doesn’t bring much comfort, but a little comfort is better than none at all. Because so much of the hurt was what the family brought him, what the brothers and the dad brought him, what everyone else brought him, and now that they’re gone, the pain should slowly start to go away too, right?

Except Tim knows he will carry their words and actions with him until the end of time. Because no one ever apologised. He cannot  _ remember  _ the last time any of them opened their mouth and said  _ sorry.  _

And that makes it so that he can’t be happy either. He can’t heal, not so well. 

Gods, he wishes he could just… He wishes he could just turn back the damn clock, that he could rewind time and go back to when he wasn’t as hurt because then if that was when he ran away — like a coward, because only cowards run from their problems, right, Jason? Right, Damian? Right, Bruce? Right, Mom? Right, Dad? —, maybe he wouldn’t be as hurt. Maybe the sadness wouldn’t be there. The unhappiness. That. 

But… Maybe if he did that, maybe he wouldn’t be himself. 

Maybe he would have no joy left either. 

(Maybe Tim would prefer no joy if it meant he also got no unhappiness.)

((Maybe Tim should build walls around himself even more so that he could protect himself from the unhappiness even if it meant stopping the joy from coming as well.))

Sometimes, Tim doesn’t know what to think. Sometimes, he thinks about the sad, sometimes he thinks about the grief, sometimes he thinks about the loneliness, sometimes…

Sometimes he thinks about the happiness. 

And isn’t that ironic, because when he thinks about the happiness, he feels the  _ least  _ happy? 

Tim turns off the shower and walks out, the air cool on his bare, wet skin. He picks up the towel he took with him (it reminds him of Cass — it’s a little worn, huge, lavender colour. Cass had a similar one. It was her favourite. Hers had loose threads too, and the colour wasn’t even anymore, not since she had to use bleach to get rid of some stains, and then there had been that one time she used it to wipe chemicals away. It had made her sad that the towel got in worse condition before she'd been reminded she might have saved a life by doing so) and wraps it around himself, not bothering to properly dry himself. 

Why should he bother when he can stay wrapped in the towel for the rest of the day if he wants to? 

It’s not like there’s anyone to see him do it anyway. 

Tim is… 

Well, he isn’t  _ happy  _ about the fact he was always the one who had to dress up as a woman when it came down to it, but he’s… maybe he’s satisfied or _content_ with it now because now he knows perfectly well how to do his makeup to highlight some of his facial features, how to do his makeup so well it seems like there are changes in his facial structure. The changes are rather minor so it’s never clear they aren’t real per se but they do enough for people not to recognise him as easily. 

Also, he’s used to wigs because of the same reason. 

It’s good because he starts using a black wig with longer hair, mostly because his own isn’t long enough, not yet. And he’s waiting for his hair to grow longer. 

Or maybe he should dye his hair. 

Yes, he needs to dye his hair. It would make more sense. It would help him stay off the radar even better. 

It would also make him hate his hair again because he doesn’t want to dye it, he knows he won’t like it. 

(Tim doesn’t know which colour he should dye his hair, except he is certain he is not going to dye it red because that would immediately put him on Dick’s radar and Tim would just  _ hate  _ it.)

Sometimes, Tim wonders if any of this would have happened — if anything had gotten to the point where it drove Tim away from his city, from the country he had wanted to think of as home but was never able to, from the family he wanted to call his own but never became such — if only he had gotten proper help in time. If he had had a therapist, would he have fallen like this? 

And then he remembers, yes, he would have. Because he had a therapist. He had one, and it was of no use, ever. 

After all, Tim was never able to actually tell him how he was feeling, he wasn’t able to  _ talk  _ to him. 

It wasn’t that he had been told not to — in fact, he’d been encouraged to tell him everything and anything. He’d been trustworthy. Alfred and Dinah and Bruce and Dick had gone out of their way to find him a therapist that could help him, one that he could talk to. And Tim had thought he could have talked to the therapist — Raymond Elwin — when he’d first met him, but… 

In the end, he was just not able to. 

And Tim went to see him twice a week, never missed an appointment if he didn’t have to, but he couldn’t truly tell Raymond how he was feeling. It was like there had been something stopping him from doing it. Tim had not been able to talk to Raymond about his family, about how they made him feel, about his panic attacks, his anxiety, he never told Raymond if he hurt himself (even though he had asked Tim to do so), if he was upset… He didn’t _talk_ to him, not really. 

And Tim knew it wasn’t working because of that. 

He knew — and still knows — that for therapy to work, he needs to say things, give his thoughts a voice. He can’t keep the things from his therapist or else it’s going to be pointless to go.

And yet, yet he had spent all of the time talking about mundane things, about how his day went, about series he liked.

Tim hates the fact he didn’t try harder. 

That he didn’t do better, not even though it was words he could use and would hear.

And because of that, he is now left without the knowledge of how to deal with his anxiety and his depression, he doesn’t know how to cope with panic attacks or trauma — not in any healthy way, at least. 

All in all, he isn’t sure what he should do. He sits on the couch, twirling his hair around his finger, hoping he could just fall asleep and never wake up. 

Or maybe he wishes to wake up  _ now  _ and find out all this was just a nightmare, a horrible, too realistic nightmare that he  _ knows  _ his subconscious wouldn’t show him, or at least it wouldn’t hurt as much as it does. 

But if this was a dream — a nightmare — then there’s a chance real life is even worse. 

Tim does not know which he would prefer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed! 
> 
> Fun fact about the therapist's name: I'm really annoying with names and literally chose a name that means "advice" and "protector/protection" for him.
> 
> (Also, chapter edited a bit as I changed Tim's name a little to work better with Blueberry's help, which, thank you!)
> 
> I'd love to hear your thoughts on the chapter!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well damn. It's the last chapter. I have _no idea_ what to feel because like, finishing a fic is weird af? Also, I don't know how the ending is tbh so like, while it _is_ what I was planning for, well. Let's see. The chapter also kinda got out of hand because it's like 6k now. I do not know what happened.
> 
> Also, if any of you is confused about the name change and think you just remember wrong, no, you don't. I did change it as Blueberry helpfully pointed out a few things wrong with it and then helped me figure out a better one. So yeah. (I also personally think it's better now so yeah. I'm happy with changing it.)
> 
> Without further ado, I hope you'll enjoy!

Tim manages to hide from the family. 

For a while, anyway. 

It takes them longer than he thought it would, but less time than he had hoped for. 

At least he knows it wasn’t his fault that it happened because he had forgotten to dye his hair and wasn’t using a wig when he was in public, and then he had also not done his makeup as well as he usually did it because he had been  _ tired.  _ A completely human mistake on his part, as well as enormous amounts of bad luck. 

After all, someone had taken a picture where his face had been visible and then uploaded it on the internet. The someone that had taken the picture was rather famous too, so apparently Barbara and Richard then saw the picture and just… They just knew. 

So, a human mistake. 

That doesn't make Tim hate himself for it any less. 

So now, he’s standing face to face in his —  _ his,  _ they have  _ no  _ right to be here unless he gives them his permission! — living room with Richard, Jason, Damian, Alfred, Stephanie and Bruce. He doesn’t know where Cass is. He is pretty sure she isn’t dead,  _ though would have any of them tried to find him if she was anyway?,  _ because she’s good like that, maybe she didn’t come because she thought it would make him uncomfortable to have them all there (she is maybe the only one of them he’s comfortable enough with to let her come if she happened to find him) or they never told her (knowing how the Bats are, it’s not too unlikely.)

He’s just come from work when he realises the small piece of a bullet shell he keeps inside the hollow door handle because he’s paranoid is lying on the porch instead of in his door handle, and it’s something he puts there both when he comes inside and when he leaves for work. And then he walks inside the flat, already knowing there is something wrong about all of this and sees the hair tie with a thin silver leaf (the one he saw Stephanie using often when he still regularly saw her) and the small elephant key charm (and oh, he recognises it, he was the one to buy it for Richard) lying on the floor, and he just… 

He just  _ knows. _

There’s no one else it could have been. 

No one else would have tried to sneak into his house because the only other people who would have come without knocking know about the bullet shell, and even if they did, they wouldn’t bother with hiding. No, Bart would have already tried to throw himself at Tim, Kon would be looking at him lazily from the doorway to the living room, Cassie would have come to say hi as soon as she heard he was back, and Pru would greet him from wherever she was, most likely the kitchen, eating his food or something. That, and their shoes and bags and jackets would be all over the hallway. 

But no, the hallway is spotless.

Indeed, the Bats aren’t the only ones who have managed to find him (he doesn't know about Pru, but it's _Pru_ and Ra's' resources, and it's not like he's truly been hiding from Ra's either, Ra's even sends him not-poisoned food every now and then, and the other three found him because Kon just so happens to be able to recognise his heartbeat), but these people are the ones he didn’t  _ want  _ to do so. And he knows, he  _ knows  _ his friends didn’t tell anyone because Pru didn’t even get along with superheroes and the three others would never let them hurt him again. They had told that to him times and times again.

Tim picks up the staff he’s hidden from view, ready to flick it open if he needs to use it to defend himself — because he’s not going anywhere without a fight and the fact they’re here in the first place kind of gives him the right — in case any of them tries to attack him or if they try to forcibly take him anywhere. Because he’s not going. Like  _ hell  _ he’s going.

And so he finds himself glaring at the ones he once considered family, and it’s only because he  _ knows  _ them that he recognises that the family is more broken than it once was. That there are cracks in the so-called ‘picture perfect’ family that they are according to everyone else. 

To Tim, though. To Tim, it looks like a scattered pile of glass shards instead of a perfect picture of a family in glass frames.

Glass shards, because one, small hit can break it down even more. 

_ It wouldn’t even need to be a carefully aimed one.  _

“Well damn, Replacement, didn’t you already have enough names? _Luca Timotheus Dietmar Fuchs._ You so desperate you need to give yourself even more identities? Wanted to pretend you’re family to Lucius? Or did you actually  _ want  _ to be engaged to Tam and become a Fox ‘cause that’s what your new surname’s implying. A pretender, that’s what you are.”

Tim chooses to ignore that statement. Yes, Lucius and Tam were the reason he chose Fuchs, but it wasn’t because he wanted to marry Tam. They just were actually good people, unlike,  _ and this he knew for sure _ , the Wayne family. He would’ve preferred them over Bruce and the others any day. “What. Are. You. Doing. Here?” he asks, voice  _ dripping  _ ice. He’s grown. He’s healed— well, actually, no. He’s still broken.

Tim’s not healed. He hasn’t mended himself. He isn’t sure if he can ever repair and fix all that’s broken, but _ that’s okay.  _ He’s still  _ better  _ than he was then, and that is why he refuses to let them in again, he refuses to let them get close enough to hurt. He does not want that. He knows he deserves better than that. 

(The tiny voice in his head that sounds disturbingly like Richard is back, telling him that they  _ are  _ good for him. Tim glares back and tells it to go to hell and stay there.)

“Oh, Timmy, you just left and we were so worried! We looked for you everywhere and so long! Why didn’t you tell us you were leaving?” Richard asks and walks towards Tim, arms opened, but Tim takes a step back and places a chair between them. Richard flinches and looks thrown, not knowing how to react. 

“Sure thing you were looking for me. I have a clear memory of you saying you didn’t need me, and that I’d come back to you anyway like  _ always.  _ You have always used me for my skills, that’s all you’ve needed me for, but hey, you’re all alive—” Tim casts a dark look at them, in worse shape than they were when he last saw them. More scars, more bruises, more attempts at covering injuries with makeup. Damian has crutches. Richard squirms in place and Alfred looks away, guilty. Stephanie has elected to stare at the floor, it seems. “—and somehow still together—” Well, as together as they can be: only Alfred and Bruce are near one another. Richard is as far from them as the room allows him to be, Damian somewhere between them, Stephanie and Jason separated from everyone else. “—so what could you  _ possibly  _ need me for anymore?” 

Richard looks around, as though pleading for help from the rest of them (all of them avert their eyes and avoid his gaze) and moves his hand towards Tim. At Tim’s sharp look though, Richard jerks his hand back and looks dejected. 

As though he didn’t have it coming. 

He should have guessed it was going to happen. 

“You don’t— we don’t need you to be useful to need you in the family? We just  _ want  _ you to be there,” Richard tries but Tim shoots him down immediately. He’s had enough of their shit, he’s not taking more of it in his own house, thank you very much. 

“Oh, do tell that to the Richard—” And gods, is it satisfying when Richard’s eyes widen and his face twists at the lack of a nickname. “—That replaced me without even telling me,  _ talking to me about it _ , to the Richard that never bothered to learn what I needed in order to feel loved because  _ your love language isn’t the same as mine and yes, I learnt what yours was,  _ to the Richard that never once said anything when Damian tried to kill me. Tell that to the Damian that only ever had hurtful words in store for me, to the Damian that tried to kill me countless of times, to the Damian that hated me so much he did his best to drive me away. Tell that to the Bruce that never bothered to say thank you for finding him, to the Bruce that let me do all the WE work. Tell that to the Jason that never called me by my name and instead  _ also  _ tried to kill me, tell that to the Stephanie that didn’t let me  _ talk _ and instead put the blame on me,  tell that to the Alfred that stood aside when everyone was doing nothing but hurting me and destroying me piece by piece.” He takes a deep breath as he’s finished, wiping his hand over his face quickly and realising it comes down a little wet. He’s shed tears.

Well, whatever.

“So I don’t care. I don’t believe you for a second. Get out.”

“But— Timmy,  _ please,  _ we just what’s best for you. We want what’s best for the family, and you being there would be the best for us.”

Damian sneers but doesn’t say a thing. Either he got threatened to behave himself or he grew up a little. 

Somehow, Tim isn’t sure which is more likely. He can’t see the family threatening  _ Damian,  _ but him growing up is a whole another thing. Both unlikely. 

Bruce nods solemnly in the background, Stephanie still isn’t looking at him. 

Alfred looks sad. 

Tim does not care. 

“Hah. As if. ‘You being there would be the best for us’,  _ my ass.  _ Jason, isn’t it easier not having the kid that replaced you anywhere near? Damian, isn’t it much nicer to not have to try and compete for the spot of the heir  _ you always had since the moment you came into the family?  _ The spot that was  _ Richard’s  _ anyway, not mine? Richard, isn’t it so much better when you don’t need to worry about when you’ll need to try and prove your little brother innocent for murder when he kills the placeholder of the family? Stephanie, aren’t you much happier when you don’t need to wonder when the next time you’ll have me ‘let you down’ because I just am not there anymore? Mr Wayne, doesn’t it make it much easier when there’s no child you need to worry about turning evil because  _ he is just so damn smart and doesn’t have as strict of a moral code as you do?  _ And Mr Pennyworth, isn’t it so much better, not needing to turn a blind eye to what’s happening in the family? Now that I’m not there, your lives should be  _ so much easier. _ Mine certainly is.

“Besides. Didn’t you just tell the world that I had died after the first one and a half years? There were no search parties for a lost Wayne, so you can’t even claim it was because I had disappeared. I hadn’t even been gone for 7 years so it means  _ you had something to do with declaring me dead.  _ I can hardly just come back anymore. Not that I would want to, either. So, get out. I don’t want to see you ever again.”

Because there’s that. They just decided he was dead and told that to the world without making sure there was a body. 

Hadn’t they learnt their lesson with Bruce already? 

(Distantly, Tim wonders if anyone told Tam or Lucius. If they hadn’t, he is going to have to contact them as soon as he gets rid of the Bats and let them know he was alive. The thought of talking to them hurts. After all, he just left and let them do his work, too, and they didn’t even know where he went.)

((It’s laughable that even then, he chose their name to use, even if in another language. Luca Timotheus Dietmar _Fuchs_. Fox. Because them he had always been able to trust. Or should have been, anyway.))

Jason laughs. He laughs, like he’s gone crazy, and maybe he has. His family certainly wouldn’t make it hard for him to lose his mind.

Tim  _ almost  _ pities him. 

Almost.

So yes, Jason laughs, like he’s gone crazy, and Tim can understand it. He throws his hands to the air and just, walks out the room, out of the house. He doesn’t close the door before yelling “The boy’s got guts while he was gone. Actually talking _back_ to them? Damn. Good luck with them, Timbo, I hope I’ll never see you again”. 

(Tim agrees with the last statement.)

And it isn’t often he’s grateful for something that comes from Jason, but now he is because Jason no longer being there means there is one less Bat in the immediate vicinity. 

“That’s not it at all! Right?” Richard asks, turning around to get his family to say something but they are either scowling at Tim (Damian), avoiding both of their eyes (Alfred, Stephanie), or not convincing in the least (Bruce). 

“Yes, that’s… right. That’s right, chum,” Bruce says, and Tim can’t resist the urge to drop his face in his hands. Because Bruce. Does. Not. Sound. Like. He. Means. It. At. All. Instead, he sounds constipated and like he’s forcing the words out of his mouth. He probably is. After all, Bruce isn’t one for words. He’s never been one for words. 

Richard tries coming to Tim again, walking towards him, seemingly ready to close Tim in his embrace and hug tight. Tim isn’t having any of it and flicks his bo staff open, prepared to fight. He won’t hurt any of them if they don’t try first, but he is still  _ prepared.  _

And he knows he could take them on. 

Pru and Cassie and Bart and Kon made sure he got training even though he wasn’t going to  _ fight  _ anymore. They had straight up told him he was stupid and ‘dumb as fuck’ if he was going to let himself waste away (Cassie, Bart and Kon a bit more nicely, Pru’s way of going about it rather rude, but Tim’s used to it and it’s Pru. Considering she’ll only befriend someone after they break her nose, and Tim’s done that rather many times, it’s understandable.) 

“Tim?” 

Richard’s voice is surprised, maybe hurt too. Tim ignores it. Richard disrespected the boundaries he set (by placing something concrete between them), so Tim doesn’t need to care about Richard’s reaction or feelings either.

Well. He tries not to care, but he can hide it from them, at least. He feels like choking, and he wants to cry, but he is not going to give them anything they could try to use against him, so he steels himself and his expression. 

“You have violated the boundaries I’ve set too many times. That’s even within this house, within the past one single hour, and there are so many more times back when I still lived in the US. I do not need to let you touch me again.  _ Ever.  _ Back off.”

Tim is snarling. He doesn’t know how to react so he goes with anger, knowing that that is going to work. He also ignores the burning in his eyes, the crushing weight on his chest and the hurt he knows is there because Richard is reaching out to him but he’s stopping him. Because only some years ago he would have been  _ ecstatic  _ to have Richard reach out to him. Because only some years ago he would have given everything to make Richard notice him for at least a moment. 

But some years ago isn’t now and he’s not going to let them fuck him over again.

His friends would have his head if he did. 

The door is slammed open and Tim immediately turns to look at the source of the sound. A young woman storms in, angry and scowling. 

A young Asian woman just about his height, maybe a little shorter. 

_ Cass.  _

She's angry, and Tim's first reaction is to be afraid because an angry Cass is _dangerous,_ but then she walks to Richard and raises her hand and— and she slaps him. She honest to god _slaps_ him and  _ hard  _ and Tim isn’t sure  _ why _ but he suddenly feels much more comfortable with the idea of Cass being there and it makes the rest of them being there much,  _ much easier.  _

“You! Not supposed to bother Tim. Not with everyone. Needs space, not you trying to surpass boundaries again!” she snarls, much like Tim had only moments ago, jabbing a finger at his chest before her entire demeanour changes and becomes calmer. Safer. She turns to Tim and puts a smile on her face, taking a step closer but no more. She doesn’t even try to come any closer than that. It’s like she’s letting Tim keep the space he wanted while trying to show that she’s not necessarily with them. 

That she doesn’t have the same opinions they do. 

_ That he can trust her not to hurt him. _

“I’m sorry, Tim. Didn’t know they were coming today so couldn’t stop them. Told them earlier they cannot come because maybe they bother you but did not listen,” she shoots a pointed look at Richard, and Tim has to suppress a laugh. “Did they hurt you?” 

Tim bites his lips and thinks for a moment, biting his lip. He isn’t sure. They did not hurt him, not physically, but he thinks he’s hurt by them doing all this. And maybe, just  _ maybe  _ Cass cares about his mental state too, about his emotions, so he nods slowly, and switches to sign language. After all, Cass was always more comfortable with sign language. < _ They didn’t hurt me physically, but coming here and violating my boundaries was hurtful and I was not happy to find them here in the first place, _ > he signs, and Cass nods. 

“I understand,” she tells him, and it is a little surprising she keeps  _ talking.  _ Not signing. Did things change while he was gone? Maybe. Perhaps he should ask.

But then, as soon as Tim lifts his hands again to keep signing, she shakes her head. “No. If you not more comfortable signing now, we speak because this—” she gestures at everything. “—about you.” Cass points at him.

It is… It’s just both so sad and so relieving to hear that. 

She’s using  _ words  _ for  _ him.  _

She wants to make sure Tim understands this is about him and not her, and Tim is so happy and so sad because why is she doing this for him? He doesn’t deserve her kindness, not after having run away. But also, she’s the first person in a long time to do something like  _ this  _ for him, doing something she’s not as comfortable with because she  _ knows  _ Tim prefers said thing even though she also knows he could very well speak to her in her way.

He appreciates and loves Cass so much.

Then she turns on her heel to look at Bruce and Richard and Alfred and Damian and Stephanie, and the frown is back and she’s  _ angry  _ and it’s just so clear because she’s pointing at the door and the air is no longer calm and welcoming. 

“Out. He did not want you come. Need to respect what he wants sometimes too.  _ Go,  _ unless Tim say otherwise.”

Stephanie opens her mouth, but she only gets “Yeah but I—” out before Cass glares at her and she just. She just shuts up. She shuts up like she doesn’t know how to speak. There’s a sad look in her eyes as she walks past Richard and she tries to shoot a pleading look at Tim but  _ he just turns his gaze away.  _ He can’t. Not now. 

He gave all of them too many chances. 

This is not the time to give any of them a chance. 

He can’t do so now. 

Bruce nods curtly, not saying a word, because when was the last time he did anyway. Alfred walks behind him, still guilty. “My deepest apologies for all they and I have done to you, Master Tim. You’re always welcome back to the Manor, remember that,” he says, but Tim knows that he doesn’t care about the offer. Not enough. He’s not coming back, he’s not coming back even to the States if he can help it. 

Damian looks at Richard, then his father, and then he just walks out. Not before throwing something at Tim but Cass catches it and puts it in her pocket before Tim can even figure out what it was. She shoots an accusing look at Richard with a signed < _ see what he is doing? This is what you let him keep doing to Tim for years. _ >

Perhaps it's a good thing Tim doesn't know what it was.

Richard is the only one of them that doesn’t leave. He looks at where his family disappeared before turning to Tim again. “Please, Timmy—” he begins but doesn’t get any further with what he’s saying.

“I am not Timmy!” he snaps. “My name is  _ Tim,  _ though to  _ you  _ I am Luca Fuchs. Get that through your thick head already. You lost your rights to call me by  _ any  _ nicknames the moment I had to leave the state and the  _ country  _ to heal from everything you and everyone else have done.”

Richard flinches but to his credit, doesn’t say anything. He looks down, ashamed.

_ Good.  _

_ He should feel ashamed. _

Cass looks at him and tilts her head, about to sign before shaking her head and reminding herself to speak, at least for now. “Can I hug?” Tim nods and opens his arms for her, a light (sad) smile on his face. 

She asked. 

She’s still using the words.

No words can ever explain how happy it makes him to have Cass use his love language because it’s been so long since anyone’s done that for him and he just— Yeah. 

Cass wraps her arms around him and squeezes him a little, hesitating as she’s not sure how far she can go. It’s appreciated. Tim doesn’t know either. He doesn’t know where he stands with her anymore, after all these long, three years of silence and being completely absent. 

“Thought you were dead. So glad to see you again, little brother. Tim. Luca?” Cass’ questioning tone breaks through the silence surrounding them and Tim can’t help but let a few tears roll down his cheeks into her shirt. 

“Tim. Or little brother, I guess. You’re good. Thank you.  _ Thank you for the words _ ,” he breathes out into her shoulder, and though his words are barely audible, Cass seems to hear him anyway. And so he stands there, trying to swallow back his tears but it’s difficult. Cass rubs circles to his shoulder carefully, as though to make sure he knows she’s there. That she’s  _ there,  _ that she can see him and hear him. 

That she  _ cares.  _

And Tim is happier than he’s been since Kon and Cassie and Bart found him and apologised for not having helped him back then. For not having stood against the Bats when they had seen it happen before. 

Happier than when Pru found him and just stayed and stopped trying to get him to go to Ra's' side once he'd told he didn't want it to Ra's' face. (Ra's', who had taken it pretty damn well, face. Tim still isn't sure how he got out of it alive.)

Finally, Cass lets go of him but doesn’t move far from his side. She lets him have some space, but she’s still closer to him than she is to Richard. 

“Please, T— Luca, don’t shut us out again,” Richard pleads. Tim scrunches up his nose. Was it in any way  _ his  _ fault that he shut them out? No. No, it was not. Richard does not have the right to make it sound like that. “Can’t you come back with us?”

“No.  _ No.  _ You declared me dead. Tim Wayne is  _ dead  _ in the eyes of the law and I am  _ not  _ coming back to the people that made sure that was going to happen. Said law would not have declared me dead until 7 years had passed since I disappeared. There were not seven years between you coming here and me disappearing, even less than that between you realising I was truly  _ gone  _ and you actually finding me. It's still been less than five years.”

“But Jay was dead too, and now he’s legally not so we could do the same for you, right—”

Tim shakes his head and Richard freezes on the spot. It looks like he  _ still  _ isn’t used to people saying no to him, used to people that once adored him going against him. 

“I said  _ no,  _ Richard. It’s not the same. It’s not the same at all.”

“I—”

“He was _actually_ dead.  _ I  _ was not. Mr Wayne had a body to prove he was dead. You had  _ nothing _ for me. Nothing to believe I was dead, let alone make it official. Did anyone even tell any of my friends? Or do they all think I’m actually dead, even now that you found me and clearly weren’t afraid of violating my boundaries  _ once again. _ ”

“But we—”

“But you  _ what?  _ All any of this looks like to me is that  _ you gave up on me,  _ and a group of people that does that so quickly is the  _ last  _ group of people I want to go back to.”

His shoulders slump. Tim almost pities him but almost isn’t the same as actually and so he ignores it. It takes him a good five minutes to open his mouth again. “I just— I love you, okay? And I’m concerned and worried. Please. Don’t shut us out again even if it was our fault.”

Tim gestures for Richard to go on, an unimpressed look on his face. He doesn’t really care, but he has a feeling he’s not getting Richard out before he gets to say what he wants to. A moment later Richard sighs and continues. 

“It’s… Stay in Amsterdam and never come back to Gotham if that’s what you want. It’s okay if you don’t consider us family—”

“Don’t worry, I haven’t done so now in about 5 years, and yes, that’s since the whole lost-in-time incident.”

Richard sighs a little but seems to agree. At least he doesn't say anything about that and continues talking. “It’s okay if you don’t respond to us if we contact you and you don’t need to see us ever again if that’s what you want though I’d really, really like it and I’m not the only one because Steph and Alfred and so many others miss you—” If there are as many people as Richard seemed to try to imply, how was it only two of them were mentioned, both people who had just broken into his house (because no, it’s still not home)? “—but  _ please,  _ let us know how you’re doing every once in a while. Send a picture or a word or whatever you want every now and then to let us know you’re alive, even if it’s just a picture of a trashcan with a caption “that’s you all”. Please. We won’t even reply to you or anything if that’s more comfortable for you.”

He looks at Tim with that kicked puppy face of his and Tim isn’t sure whether it’s affecting him or not. Or, well, it’s certainly affecting him because it’s pissing him off but other than that, he doesn’t know.

It’s not like he cares anyway.

He sighs. “I’m not doing this for you, understand that. I’m doing this for myself because I don’t trust you not to bother and harass me if I don’t do it.” Tim pinches the bridge of his nose and swallows his hesitation. “I will send you something little about life every now and then, but it is not determined  _ when.  _ None of you is allowed to tell me to 'do so faster' either. I will send you messages  _ on my own terms.  _ Secondly, only one of you is allowed to come every month. And by ‘you’ I mean your family, all the people associated with you and them, and the rest of the hero community. If Donna happens to come by on the first of the month without telling anyone else, that’s not my problem, the rest of you aren’t allowed to visit for the remainder of the month.

“The only exceptions to this rule are Cassie, Bart and Kon who found me  _ years back  _ and proved themselves to be still the same people I loved and trusted with my life, as well as Cass because  _ she’s always tried,”  _ Tim states with such finality even Richard can’t try to get around it. 

Or well. 

It’s not like it was Richard that usually tried to get around the rules, it was Tim and Damian, Jason just outright broke them. Richard just… He likes to try to see how far he can push boundaries before it’s too late. 

Or maybe he doesn’t  _ like  _ to try, he just… He just happens to do it.

Too often. 

“...Even Alfred?”

Tim understands Richard’s confusion, he does. Alfred simply isn’t someone any of them can disappoint, someone any of them  _ wants  _ to disappoint, and saying no to him usually does just that. So no one ever says no to Alfred. No one stops him from visiting any of them if he wants to do so. 

…

“Yes.”

_ “Even Alfred.” _

Not until now. Not until Tim does so.

Even he really doesn’t  _ want  _ to do so. 

He just _has_ to.

“Especially all the Bats—” Because Alfred is a bat by default. He’s as good as Bruce’s father at this point. Besides, even if he says nothing, he judges. He looks at you in that way only he knows how to do and you  _ know  _ he’s judging you. As much as he loves Alfred, Tim can’t take the judgement anymore. “—will have to follow this rule or I  _ will  _ make sure it happens by law.” And he isn’t kidding. He will get the law involved if he needs to. “The only one of you who gets to  _ choose  _ whether I see them as a Bat or not is Cass, and that’s final.” Because she tries. She’s always tried. She’s here and she stood up for him against Richard, and by extension, most likely also against Barbara. And she used words. For  _ him.  _ Tim wants to show he appreciates it more than he knows how to put in words. “I will not stand for any of you dancing all over my boundaries again.”

So, logically Tim knows he’s still letting them do just that a little — the fact he gives them this is a sign of it still as he really, truly doesn’t want to see them again. But… He still doesn’t know how to tell them no, not really, and he’s not sure when he will, but he’s getting better. And at least he gave them clear boundaries to follow and made the consequences of not doing so known. And he didn’t tell them that “maybe it could be nice if you did this”. So He’s getting better.

To his credit, Richard doesn’t try to argue. He nods once, looks down, brushes his bangs aside (or, in reality, wipes his eyes, but he disguises it as brushing his bangs aside and Tim isn’t about to comment on it, and they all know that). Then he looks up again, expression hardened. “Alright. I will… I will forward that to the others. Cass, are you coming?”

Cass looks at Tim and raises a brow. Tim gives her a small smile. “It’s probably better if you go with them. I need to be alone for now. Will you please make sure they all are told what I told Richard?” She simply nods and walks towards the door, grabbing Richard by the arm on her way out. She only stops just before she makes it out the room, turns around and waits until her eyes meet Tim’s. 

“I love you, little brother. I love you. Remember.”

Tim smiles again. “I love you too.”

Then he sees the way Richard seems to want to say something as well, and so he waits. He waits and looks at Richard, and Cass has seen the same because she is not dragging him out yet. 

“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. For everything,” Richard says and his eyes turn sad again. His brows furrow a little and Tim is sure that there is a teardrop on his cheek but he doesn’t care. 

“I know. You’re years too late.”

In the following months, he has to tell many, many superheroes in civilian disguises to get out of his house. It seems they have not gotten the message of  _ only one per month  _ that applies to all but four of them. All four of whom have explicitly been told they are exceptions. His friends. Cass. The only ones. 

(Technically even their visits have been limited, but in reality, it’s not that bad. Cassie and Bart and Kon are allowed to come by four times a month. No one, including them, is allowed to stay longer than three consecutive days, though to the Bats the maximum number of visiting days is one. 

They don’t complain too much.)

((And while it’s hard for him to limit the visits like this, and even though it hurts him to do so because all of these people were people he once thought he could find a family in, it makes life easier and he is glad he did it.))

But then the visits get to what he wanted. 

He suspects they have finally learnt he was serious about the boundaries he set (he always was, and it feels they are not happy that he has learnt how to stand by them and stop people from trying to get past them without his permission) and are communicating. 

And then, seven months in, Damian breaks into his house even though Bruce is in. 

Again. 

For the eleventh time since he first told them the rules.

Tim’s best guess? Damian just  _ did not care.  _

He starts caring when the police hand him a piece of paper telling him to appear in court on a set date because there has been a request to get a restraining order against him for trespassing and harassment. 

It just so happens Tim has been recording Damian’s words for this. 

And it just so happens Damian is answerable to the law by now.

Tim, fortunately, gets both a good lawyer and a good judge, and the court decides in his favour. 

After the next month’s visit, none of the Bats except for Cass visit him for years.

And Tim? 

Tim is okay with that. 

After all, without them, he’s healing. 

The strange longing for a home stays in him. He doesn’t find one. It takes him long to realise it is not a place he’s longing for, even longer to realise  _ what  _ it is he yearns. And when he does, Tim isn’t sure whether he should be sad or angry, or maybe relieved, but he’s not any of those, instead finding himself to be only numb. 

Because the home he was longing for was acceptance from the family he was supposed to be a part of, so first it was his parents and then the Waynes. Which is something he doesn’t get nor ever got. That also makes the home something he cannot find no matter what he tries. Such a thing isn’t going to come. At least it also explains why it was worse being with the people that pretended to accept him than the people that never did. 

He doesn’t even know if he will one day find another group of people he will start considering his family one day. 

(He does.)

((He does when he realises, as he’s buried under multiple blankets and in the middle of a cuddle pile by his friends while Pru watches over all of them even if she pretends she doesn’t care, that these people who didn’t give up on him, and the person who found him again and just decided to stay despite their history, and the person  _ he left  _ but who still wanted to make sure  _ he  _ understood what she meant, they are family. 

And they accept him. 

And maybe he’s indeed found a family and a home.

A home, that does not include the people whom he thought would always fight for him, and does not exclude some the people he thought were not going to stay.

And that means he doesn’t need to leave. 

Not again. 

_ Never again.)) _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...Let me love Pru and Tim being friends ok I need more of it. 
> 
> Anyway. We've come to the end of this fic. I hope you enjoyed and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this because it's literally only my second DC fic and _please adopt me because I have fallen into DC hell and can't get out, might as well stay I guess_.
> 
> You can find me on my [tumblr](https://ethelphantom.tumblr.com/) if you want to scream at me about this fic, DC, or Code Geass! I can also be found on my art instagram [here](https://www.instagram.com/daicrimeth/?hl=en), so yelling at me there is ok too

**Author's Note:**

> So that was a thing? I hope you enjoyed!
> 
> You can find me on my [tumblr](https://ethelphantom.tumblr.com/) if you want to scream at me about this fic, DC or Code Geass! I can also be found on my art instagram [here](https://www.instagram.com/daicrimeth/?hl=en), so yelling at me there is ok too (perhaps even preferable.)


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